So you want to be a mentor: taking someone from noob to knowledgeable

This paper comes out of dozens of conversations I’ve had with people wanting to get into infosec as a career. The problem is that universities, SANS, various other organizations and online courses are expensive. Most of these individuals are looking to get into better paying jobs, thus they don’t have the up-front cash to go those routes. Also, infosec is a difficult field in that the body of required knowledge is vast covers topics including security philosophy, endpoint operating systems, applications, networking, cloud, scripting, compliance/regulation/audit….

This paper is not meant to teach individuals this body of knowledge, but is intended to be a roadmap for an experienced professional to help a willing and motivated person to get on a path to becoming a knowledgeable practitioner. It contains almost no original content, but lots of reference links and a framework of learning that will cover most of the basics, as well as suggesting topics to continue learning.

Nick Moore

Nick has been in Infosec for 20 years and IT for even longer. He has worked for a number of different companies including Deloitte Consulting, Nokia, McAfee, Cisco, Sourcefire and Palo Alto Networks. He has been fortunate enough to have benefited from many mentors and would like to give back to the community at large. He lives in Phoenix with his wife and three noisy dogs, enjoys gourmet cooking and bicycling, but not enough of the latter to keep the former in check.